


I Dreamed a Dream

by harperhug



Category: Captain America (Movies), Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Body Horror, Dreamsharing, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-11-28 04:59:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11410704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harperhug/pseuds/harperhug
Summary: Once upon a time, a princess was imprisoned in a tower and begged for anyone to find her and save her. A magic bird heard her lament and gave one brave knight her location and her life story in his dreams. He found her and saved her, and they lived happily ever after. The bird was so moved that she let everyone see their soulmates' lives in dreams. The end....Of course, reality couldn't be as simple as all that.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZepysGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZepysGirl/gifts).



Bucky Barnes knew from the quickly-receding soreness in his throat that Steve was sick again. Probably from getting caught in the late rainstorm last night if the nonexistent dampness in Bucky's hair were any indication.

Bucky closed his eyes and concentrated. The last thing he remembered from his dream was Sarah Rogers' voice, telling Steve the story of the princess locked in the tower who wished to be rescued. Bucky remembered his own mother telling him the story. In her (far better, if you asked Bucky) version, it was a humble little sparrow who had heard the princess' lament, rather than a magnificent swan who deigned to grant the princess' wish. He liked the idea that all that power was in a small, often reviled to a bird near-universally considered the epitome of avian perfection. Magnificent or humble, the magic bird granted the princess' true love a dream about her loneliness in her tower, and was so moved by the prince's heroic rescue that it decided everyone should dream about their soulmate's lives so that, when they met, they would know each other than anyone else.

Bucky felt his mouth twist into a grimace as he recalled the fairytale. The dreams were rarely so straightforward as all that. The subject of the dreams could change upon their death, and nobody wanted to be the second-most compatible, particularly if the subject of their dreams had been constant throughout their lives. It was also not uncommon for one person to be the soulmate of two or even more people, and Bucky was pretty sure he was going to end up as one of them. Yesterday, while they'd been playing baseball with the neighbourhood boys Steve hadn't (yet) pissed off,  he had gushed about his dream of curling hair and applying lipstick. The boys had whooped and hollered. Michael Thompson from the eighth floor asked if he was going to start wearing it for real if he liked it so much. Bucky had punched him, and Steve had lectured him. Bucky thought his world had half-ended, and he dreaded the day Steve would meet his soulmate and end it fully.

And then the Harbor was bombed, the war declared, and the entire unit captured. The day that Steve met his soulmate, far from being the worst thing Bucky could imagine, became a comfort while Bucky's imagination fed off of far worse things. If only Steve felt the same way--despite having been accepted into the army the day before Bucky's first escape attempt, a chill seemed to linger over him in Bucky's dreams. But he could never sleep long enough to pinpoint the reason why before he was woken up for another one of Zola's experiments.

"Serum number sixty-five," Zola's squeaky voice called out before he injected the man next to Bucky.

Bucky stared at the man's rapidly expanding form with the sick fascination of someone who was both fascinated by and dreading that the same thing was going to happen to him. The man's screams almost entirely drowned out the sound of his skin actually tearing until he finally, finally bled to death. Bucky wondered if anyone would collect his body, or how anyone would even know it was him. Any distinct features that survived the rapid growth was hidden under too much slickly-gleaming muscle.

Bucky put up as much of a struggle as he could manage when Zola moved onto him with serum number sixty-six, but it didn't even seem to faze the mad scientist. Bucky saw the syringe moving closer and he tried to find anything that might take his mind off what was about to happen to him. He focused on a hawk flying outside, following its lazy flight with his eyes. For the first time since this nightmare had begun, Bucky once again wished that Steve were his soulmate, so that he would dream about him and find him. He didn't seem to be expanding, so Steve could probably still recognize him.

That was the thought he held onto when he finally passed out.

This time, his dream was different. He, as Steve, climbed into a kind of oblong pod straight out of something from one of Bucky's books. The cover closed over him, so that he got one last, faint look at Steve's sharp-featured face in the reflection of the glass. Someone who sounded an awful lot like Howard Stark started yelling numbers in time with everything getting brighter, brighter, brighter, until it hurt even behind his eyelids. Then the real pain started, pain beyond anything Bucky had ever felt before.

Then it stopped, and James Buchanan Barnes never dreamed about Steve Rogers again.


	2. In Time Gone By

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning in this chapter for body horror (a character feels his entire body being destroyed and reformed cell by cell). It starts at the **** (four stars) and ends at the ******* (seven stars).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NGL, I'm still not happy with the description of Steve's transformation. I was going for heavy, heavy body horror, but no matter how many times I edit it, it always reads like purple prose. So here's the shortest and least narmy version.

"You have no idea how to talk to a woman, do you?"

"I used to tell my friend that I was saving my words for my soulmate," Steve searched Peggy's eyes for even a scrap of recognition, "but the truth is, women aren't exactly lining up to dance with a guy they might step on."

Peggy's tone was casual, like she was talking to just any other person. No matter how desperately Steve tried to believe that her spiel about finding the right partner was directed at him, it was clear that Steve Rogers was not the subject of Peggy Carter's dreams.

"I've seen you put on your lipstick," Steve blurted out before he could stop himself, because why settle for ruining his chances when he could just dropkick them off a cliff? "It's called Sweet Dreams because you can put people to sleep with it. And your hair curlers hide bullets. You like using them because they're heavier so they-"

Peggy held up a hand to stop him talking, which was probably a good thing, all things considered. "I'm your soulmate," her eyes held surprise and disbelief, but still no recognition. Steve's heart sank. _I'm your soulmate._

"But I'm not yours."

Peggy folded her hands in front of her and sat rigidly, as if her ironclad control could make up for the fact that Steve couldn't appear to find his. "I've never dreamed, Steve Rogers."

Steve tried to swallow down his bitterness. It was just his luck, to be born with two soulmates who didn't dream about him. Then he remembered that Bucky was currently being tortured on Armin Zola's table, and he chastised himself for being so self-pitying. Climbing into the pod without knowing what was going to happen to him was honestly a bit of a relief, because it meant he could do something about that, at least.

"Is it too late to go to the bathroom?"

Dr. Erskine laughed, a sound Steve held onto when the pod he refused to think of as a coffin closed over him. Howard Stark started yelling instructions and numbers as everything around Steve grew brighter and hotter than the sun. He panted like a dog and felt suddenly glad that Bucky wasn't his soulmate, because he would be going out of his mind with worry over what Steve was doing to himself. He wondered whether the serum would change his dreams, or, god forbid, change Bucky's dreams.

****

Steve stopped wondering as every muscle simultaneously liquified. Had his stomach and the rest of his organs not ruptured at the same time, he might have thrown up. His bones shattered and splintered back together underneath skin that was stretched so tightly Steve was sure that it would rip any second. Then his eyes melted into their sockets and he could no longer see or feel anything that wasn't being excruciatingly unmade. He either passed out and started to dream or let his mind retreat from the massive pain receptor his body had become--either way, he was in Bucky's body, the slowly-receding pain of whatever Zola had done to him today a relief from the impossibly cold fire in his own. He was still present somewhere in his body, but the agony was distant, something he could easily ignore if only no one were screaming. Before his ears flipped themselves inside out, Steve found, to his horror, that the scream was an inhuman mix of his and Bucky's voice.

Bucky was dreaming about him. And right now he was dreaming about Steve in pain.

With concentration and a clear, sharp memory of what his body felt like, Steve forced himself back into it, pushing Bucky out as gently as he could when whatever he was now wasn't entirely corporeal. His body had started to come together now, making it easier to feel the boundaries of where he should occupy, but he was still reluctant. Every part of him that wasn't hurting was so incredibly sensitive that they might as well have been.

"...t down!" Peggy shouted. "Shut it down!"

Without his eyes back, Steve couldn't see what was happening, but if he still felt like a Swiss Army Man left out in the sun too long then his body couldn't look that much better. He cleared the blood out of what he thought to be his throat. He heard himself make a sound from about a quarter of an inch lower. "No!" he shouted. "I can do this!"

The cacophony outside continued, and Steve's body burned and stretched.

*******

It stopped so abruptly that the cessation of the pain was pain, and then the pod hissed open. Steve rested his swollen head back and tried to calm down so the tight band around his middle would go away. He opened his eyes as nurses milled around him and looked down. Oh. So he wasn't just nervous.

"How do you feel?" Peggy asked, reaching forward to touch a chest that looked to Steve as if someone had put an entire second torso in front of his. He felt her fingers brush him softly. No, that was definitely his chest.

Wow, that was _his_ chest.

"Taller," he said honestly, noticing that he was, indeed, standing a few inches over Peggy. He wondered if the glazed look in her eyes meant she'd dreamt for the first time, and that lead to thoughts about how he had stopped Bucky's first dream about him. Unless it wasn't Bucky's first dream ab-

The viewing room blew up in a fireball at almost the same time that a dark-haired, pale-suited man shot Dr. Erskine.


End file.
